Use of literature, standards and bibliographies

Literature plays a strong role in any form of essay, dissertation or project.

It can be a source of information for research purposes and therefore noted in your bibliography, but it is also used as proof of your arguments and therefore has to be referenced within your report.

So where do you start? Firstly, you need to find the best sources of information for your work. Simply check out your local libraries (Its often good to go to your county’s library headquarters – that will have the largest number of useful books in one place) and search using key words. Be careful not to be too generic, think more specifically about what you need to find out. Searching using a key word such as semiconductor wont really work for example, as the word will appear too often to be useful.

Also, don’t forget to use the Internet to your advantage, search engines such as google will help you find out lots of information, and of course, as long as you’ve referenced it in your work or noted it in your bibliography, there is no problem using it.

Use of literature

An important part of any project is to appreciate what has been done previously and read up on what your predecessors achieved. This then needs to be demonstrated in your work and so your tutors will be expecting you to review and use a certain number of literature sources.

As early as you can during your project, put time aside to conduct a literature review, where you research a large number of publications of one form or other (use all routes open to you – journals, papers, books, Internet…). This way you find out the most relevant information for your project, and know where to go for your citations.

On average you can be expected to mention 8-10 relevant published papers, journals or books of some form, but always check what your university expects from you, so you don’t get caught out. Always cite documents regularly however, as projects with little or no literature citations are likely to be penalised.

Citation and Reference Standards

Most of our work is done in isolation, but builds on the work of others we have worked with, or come across during our research. So, with this in mind, it is important to give credit to those who have helped us by making sure we cite their articles, books etc as references.

In terms of standards, it’s always useful to check with your university as most have a specific standard they will expect you to use. If not, the rule is to be consistent. Choose a style to follow – in terms of symbols and technical vocabulary etc as well as citation and referencing, and then stick to it.

Standards should be applied to symbols used, notation and technical vocabulary, and one useful site to check out on this front is: http://bsonline.techindex.co.uk.

With regards to literature citation throughout your work, the Harvard standard for book, journals and paper citation is a well-known and respected form. Perhaps if you don't have a specific university standard to follow, this might be the one to use. Here is a good place to start: http://www.library.hbs.edu/guides/citationguide.pdf

Again, there are specific citation guidelines for using electronic media references. A very useful site for advice on this matter is: http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html.

In terms of both citing and referencing, there is usually an outline you can use. The advice below can give you a rough guideline to follow, but as we keep reminding you, check in with your university for the correct outline to follow.

When and when not to cite

According to the Harvard standard, you ‘cite a source by making a notation or signal in your paper that refers your reader to a place where you give full publication data about the source.’

If you begin to find that that you are citing from documents left, right and centre then it may be time to worry. This means you are taking too much from other people’s ideas and not offering you own. With that in mind, try to get a balance where you compare the work you’ve done to others rather than solely discussing what they’ve achieved.

Also don’t cite things that are common knowledge; in the sense that this information can be found in multiple sources such as encyclopaedias and text books.

Details to include when referencing are:

Book: Authors name; surname first, then first name and initials, year of publication (in brackets), title of book in italics and publisher.
Magazine or Newspaper: Author, year of publication, titles of article in ‘single quotation marks’, title of newspaper or magazine in italics and date of publication.
Online sources: Author, title of document in ‘single quotation marks’, date of publication, full URL and date of access (in brackets).

Bibliographies

The bibliography differs from references in that it contains a list of the general reading you partook in for the project, whereas the references are specific to a point or argument being made in the text. It is usually listed in much the same way as the references though not normally cited in the text.

There are many different standards in terms of writing both bibliographies and references, so keep this in mind. For example, some tutors like to see bibliographies written out in alphabetical order, others in date order and others in use order so keep this in mind – so just make sure you remember to check!

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With thanks to:

Hugh Griffiths and Nina Thornhill. UCL
Department of Education, Victoria, Australia
Harvard University

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